


Shoot to Thrill

by Sorrel



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Flirting, Romantic Friendship, Slow Build, badass bisexuals with guns, criminally competent, lies and the lying liars who tell them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-18 03:50:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10608699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: Reyes Vidal Rule #1 of Criminal Enterprise: You don't have to like someone in order to do business with them.Pathfinder Caveat: But it certainly helps.Reyes Vidal Rule #2 of Criminal Enterprise: The more attractive someone is when they're wearing a gun, the more dangerous they're going to be once they decide to start shooting.Pathfinder Caveat: That doesn't necessarily mean you should steer clear.  Keep a weather eye, be ready to draw first, and if at all possible, keep them pointed at the other guy, just in case.Reyes Vidal Rule #3 of Criminal Enterprise: Whatever you do, don't fall for a mark.  It doesn't matter how attractive they are, or smart, or funny.  Don't do it.  There's way too much at stake.Pathfinder Caveat: Ignore Rule #3.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> More or less follows the canon storyline. I did take some liberties with the main story arc to draw the timeline out a bit, because I am congenitally incapable of writing anything but slow build romances. Most of the dialogue from the first few canon scenes is more or less original recipe, but the later ones will probably be considerably more expanded. Also, I'm generally pretty confident about the spellings of names and places, but I don't always play with subtitles on, so if I missed something, let me know!

Looking back, he should have known he was in trouble when the first thing on his mind when he first laid eyes on her was, "At least the new Pathfinder is prettier than her old man."

Not that he's the sort of man to underestimate a lady just because of a pretty face; quite the opposite, really. In his experience, pretty ladies are the most dangerous kind. Especially pretty ladies who carry weapons. And Pathfinder Ryder is definitely carrying, in spite of the conspicuously empty holster strapped to her thigh. He has a sixth sense about these things. A boot knife, perhaps; or a dagger up the sleeve of her expensively casual synthleather jacket. Perhaps both. The lazy confidence in her short, stocky body says she’s not worried about anyone in this bar, and the scar under her eye says she’s not afraid of getting up close and personal in a fight.

Reyes is more than fine with that. He does some of his very best work up close and personal, and _fighting_ is, after all, the very least of what he has in mind for her.

Because he's a gentleman, he waits until Umi's settled her business before he makes his entrance- who is he to interrupt the show? Plus, he likes it best when he can surprise people, and he knows Ryder isn't expecting to get approached: not here, not like this. She had enough common sense not to wear an Initiative uniform, at least, but the well-fed softness in her tattooed cheeks marks her an outsider almost as quickly as her freshly-scrubbed skin and electric blue hair. She's an exotic jungle parrot in a flock of beaten-down sparrows, and you don’t have to know she’s the Pathfinder to know she’s dangerous. From the wry twitch at the corner of her mouth, she's all too aware of why she has that side of the bar to herself.

Which, of course, makes it all the better when he slides into the carefully empty space at her elbow and says, "You look like you're waiting for someone."

Ryder goes still with, if he doesn't miss his mark, genuine surprise; she takes in a quick sip of air on an indrawn breath that he probably wasn't meant to notice and then turns, one brow lifted inquisitively. He hits her with his best charmer's smile, lifting two fingers to Umi, who's already reaching under the bar for two glasses, glaring at him like it's _his_ fault some krogan asshole doesn't like to pay his tab. He smiles winningly back and takes the shots she pours, offers one tumbler to Ryder as if he never doubts she'll turn it down.

She hesitates for one endless moment, eyes flickering over him in a speedy, if somewhat scattered once-over, and he realizes two things: one, that she's younger than he was perhaps subconsciously expecting; early twenties, at best. And two, that it would be fatal to underestimate her based on that fact. There's something in her eyes when they wander back up to his: older than the rest of her face, tired, and flinty with a determination that's at odds with the studied casualness of her pose. He’s met any number of people with that look in their eye, and almost universally, it ends badly for the poor soul who decides to get in their way.

Lucky for him, he has no such intentions toward the Pathfinder. Quite the opposite.

"I've got time for a drink," she allows, and now he has a voice to go with the face: rougher than he would expect, pleasantly raspy in a way that evokes late nights and cigarette smoke, and carefully neutral in tone. Perhaps too carefully? It’s hard to tell if she’s nervous on such short acquaintance- she doesn’t _seem_ on edge, but she can’t possibly be as confident as she seems, either. The Pathfinders are the best of the best (or so all the cheerful Initiative adverts claimed, anyway) but she is, after all, just one woman, surrounded by a lot of people who’d have reason to hold a grudge.

He keeps his speculation off his face, however, and just chuckles warmly, like he hasn’t just been sizing her up like a prized bull for breeding. She smiles back, slight but automatic, and takes the glass when he hands it to her, her gloved fingers brushing against his. She gestures with the glass in silent toast, not waiting for his acknowledgement before draining the contents in one smooth swallow.

_Not bad,_ he has to admit. Umi's rotgut has set sterner souls than she back on their heels a bit at first introduction, and Ryder's younger than most of his liquor cabinet back in the Milky Way.

He follows suit only half a beat later, turning to set the glass on the bar. To business, then. "Shena," he offers, and very carefully doesn't let himself smirk at the slight widening of her eyes. "But you can call me Reyes. I hate code names."

She takes offered hand and shakes it, her grip pleasantly firm and steady, neither a limp dishrag in his palm nor a too-tight clamp of feigned dominance. Doesn’t have anything to prove, or just smart enough not to try and prove it here? "I was expecting someone more… angaran."

Yes, and he paid well to keep it that way. He chuckles lightly and leans against the bar, letting his eyes go half-lidded with amusement as he catches her distrustful blue eyes with his. "The Resistance pays me to supply information." He tilts his head at a roguish angle. "Among... other things."

Her expression is unimpressed. "So you're a smuggler."

Well, she's certainly not slow, this Pathfinder. He allows himself a single quirked eyebrow of acknowledgement, which wrings the faintest of smiles out of her in return. He awards himself a mental point and tips his head toward the railing. Her eyes flicker towards Umi, rattling around behind the bar and determinedly pretending not to listen, and then she sets down her drink and follows.

“Your man—Vehn Terev—was arrested by Sloane Kelly. Leader of the Outcasts,” he adds, unnecessarily. “Word spread about what he did to Moshae Sjefa.”

He pauses, giving her a chance to mention _her_ part in undoing Terev’s folly. Ryder, one elbow propped on the railing, merely gives him an inquisitive look in return.

_Pretty, smart, and knows when to keep her mouth shut. If only more of my business associates were like her._ “The people are calling for his execution,” he continues. “And Sloane… she’s a woman of the people.”

He allows a light twist of irony on the last phrase, gesturing with expansive sarcasm as he turns to settle against the railing. Not much of a risk, talking to someone from the Initiative, but if the Pathfinder has any romantic notions about Sloane’s rebellion, better to find them now.

“Oh, I like her already,” Ryder says, but there’s a thread of something darker in her voice that makes a lie of her words. He leans in, as if imparting a secret.

“Well, she doesn’t like you.”

“Aw.” Ryder’s lips purse in exaggerated disappointment. “She’s never even met me.”

Oh, he _likes_ this one. “You work for the Initiative. Sloane was part of the uprising on the Nexus.” As if there’s any possible way the Pathfinder wouldn’t know all this already- but when you explain things to people that they already know, they tend to assume they know something you don’t. “I doubt she’ll give Vehn up easily.”

“Mm,” Ryder says. “I didn’t come all this way just to walk away empty-handed, either.”

It’s not quite a threat—not yet—but it’s not _not_ a threat, either. She meets his gaze squarely when she says it, too, and there’s an answering flutter of sheer pleasurable satisfaction that wells up in his throat. It’s been so long since someone was willing to speak openly against Sloane- so rare that someone doesn’t just roll over and take it, like there was nothing they could do-

“We’re going to be friends, you and I,” he purrs, then retreats back to a safe distance before her look of amused disdain can develop teeth. “There might be another way to get to Vehn.” Relief breaks across her face at his words; hidden away quickly but not quite quickly enough. _Interesting._ Whatever brought her to his door, hunting the Angaran Most Wanted, it’s a great deal more serious than she’d want to let on. “You work Sloane. I’ll talk to the Resistance.”

If he’s expecting gratitude, he doesn’t get it: she gives only the barest head tilt of assent, her expression still and watchful. _Good girl,_ he thinks. The faster she learns not to trust anyone, the better off she’ll be.

He straightens away from the railing and turns to make his way across the room, not bothering with the niceties of a farewell. It’s a deliberately abrupt parting, designed to grate, and if he timed it right-

“Hey,” he hears behind him, halfway up the steps, and he awards himself another mental point as he looks back over his shoulder, brows raised inquisitively. Ryder is a few steps away from the railing, looking back at him with narrowed eyes. “How do I contact you if things go south?”

_Perfect._ He lets the corner of his mouth curl up into a smirk, tips her a wink, and then turns once more and heads out of the bar.

Her footsteps start after him, not quite fast enough, and then, just as he’s predicted, he hears Umi call for Ryder to pay the tab. She slows, the flicker of an omni-tool activating in the corner of his eye, and he makes his escape up the steps and out the door, laughing to himself as he pictures the look on her face. The expression he’d gotten from the wink was almost as good, stuck somewhere between amusement and frustration, the most emotion she’d shown the entire meeting. It had just been too much to resist.

_A good beginning,_ he thinks to himself, and heads down into the market. _Now let’s see if I can make it stick._

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

He spends a very profitable afternoon in the markets, arranging the acquisition of certain materials and greasing wheels, while he’s at it. People are always more generous when they’re already doing you a favor, a unique quirk of social psychology that he’s always found absolutely fascinating. He would have blamed it on human evolutionary miswiring, except the same holds true among all the sentient species he’s encountered. Even here, a million light-years away from home, the angara are as vulnerable to the con-man’s tricks as any hard-scrabble criminal back home. It’s obscurely reassuring.

The sun’s sinking down over the horizon when he takes the lift down to the slums, checking his messages on his omni-tool with half of his attention and keeping a wary eye on the lift’s other occupants with the other. Most of the angara in the the port aren’t what you’d call the assertive sort, but he’s heard rumblings lately about Roekaar recruiters stirring up sentiments among some of the less fortunate members of their little society, preying on the resentment Sloane’s draconian tactics have beaten into the locals. Desperate people are unpredictable, and he is, after all, just one man.

No one makes a move on the long trip down, however, and he politely waves them out of the lift ahead of him. The youngest of the three gives him a shy smile in return, like his gesture was mere courtesy instead of an unwillingness to give them his back, and he sighs internally as the boy’s older and wiser companions usher him out with a wary look back at Reyes. _Was I ever that young?_

No, he decides, sticking his hands in his pockets and setting up a carelessly slow amble down the walkway toward Tartarus. No, he never had the luxury of being so trusting. Then again, he didn’t have someone looking out for him the way that kid does. Maybe he’ll survive Kadara long enough to toughen up, after all.

The club is quiet yet, late enough that the night shift are all gone off but still too early for the day shift to have finished dinner and come to drown their sorrows, and he stops by the bar to exchange pleasantries over the first of his three allotted drinks for the evening. “How’s business, brother?” Kian says, pouring with a steady hand, and Reyes takes it with a wink, sipping it with every pretense of enjoyment, like it’s fine whiskey instead of ‘shine strong enough to strip paint.

“Busy,” he says with a light chuckle, and fingers a loose bit of tiling along the edge of the bar. “The arrival of a Pathfinder makes things… interesting.”

Kian’s dark eyes gleam at him in the low light. “You don’t say. Which ark made it here, then? The Leusinia?”

“Hyperion.”

“Well, well.” Kian polishes a glass, calculation skittering across his handsome face. “We’ve got the Rough Ryder on our humble bit of rock?”

“His daughter,” Reyes says, leaning in like he’s imparting a secret, as if the news won’t be all over the port by last call. “Senior didn’t survive first landfall. Junior’s running the show now.”

“That _is_ news.” Kian looks at him sidelong. “You have word on how the Powers That Be gonna handle it?”

“Why would I? I’m merely a humble smuggler.” They exchange smirks. “But if I had to wager, I would say that the Pathfinder will not be well-received at court tomorrow.” He’s taken steps to make sure of it- not that many were needed. Sloane retains an impressive, if short-sighted, grudge against anyone flying Initiative colors.

“And the Charlatan?”

“Ah, well, you know the Collective welcomes all that are useful.” He rolls his shoulders in a careless shrug and drains his glass. “Her usefulness remains to be seen.”

“Understood,” Kian says, and slides him another glass. “I’ll put the word out.”

“Good man.” He takes his drink and stands. “Send someone up with supper when you have a few moments to spare, will you? I believe I’m going to be working late tonight.”

“Will do.”

Alone in his room, Reyes engages the privacy locks and pulls up everything his agents have on Ryder, Recon Specialist Sara. Twenty-two years old—pegged her fair and square on that one—born on the Citadel to Alec Ryder, N7 and hero of the First Contact War, and Ellen Ryder, biotic implant specialist, alongside twin brother Scott. Both twins were registered for Citadel biotic training at ten, the legal minimum for centennial races like humans. Mostly home schooled—no surprise there—and tested at well above average on her entrance scores for Arcturus Academy at the age of sixteen. She and her brother both graduated with distinction, though they finally went their separate ways after Academy: Scott as part of the security force remaining on Arcturus, and Sara to a peacekeeping force assigned to a research station in the Traverse. She saw some action there, he notes, mostly against pirates preying on the locals, where she apparently executed her duties with zeal _and_ enthusiasm.

Mm. That could be a problem.

Information about her activities since arriving in the Heleus is considerably more spotty, but he has the outline. Alec Ryder dead on Habitat 7, and Pathfinder duties transferred to his eldest- against chain of command, too, unless Reyes is missing his mark. Surprising that the short-sighted pricks on the Nexus allowed her to keep the position, all things considered. Unless she _couldn’t_ be removed, for some reason? Everyone knows there’s a chain of succession for Pathfinders, but just what that means for the Pathfinders in question is somewhat… sketchier. Just one of the many things the Initiative kept from the rank and file, Reyes thinks bitterly. Maybe if some of their middle management were kept better informed, the transfer of power might have gone a little smoother.

Ah, well. Too late to be fretting about that now, isn’t it?

Whatever their reasons, Nexus leadership earned dividends for their faith in their new Pathfinder: a colony on Eos, successful at last, another on Voeld, and the beginnings of an alliance with Angaran leadership. The latter is almost more impressive than the former, as far as Reyes is concerned. His own carefully-cultivated relationship with the Resistance can best be described as “grudging” on a good day, but if what he’s hearing is right, Ryder has the ear of Evfra himself. He wouldn’t believe it, if it hadn’t been for the orders that came down through Keema to assist the human Pathfinder. He’d respect her ability to charm the old bastard even if she’d done nothing else of note.

The rest of the packet is rumors, things his sources couldn’t confirm but couldn’t disprove, either: that she had an affair with her lieutenant, that she had an affair with her _other_ lieutenant, that she had an affair with both of them at once… _Good lord, people are obsessed with sex-_ Ah, and here it was, the glint of gold at the bottom of the mine shaft: _subject reports control over Remnant technology._ Supposedly, Ryder was not only able to access the vault on Eos, but to actually use it to restart atmosphere processing. Reports of her activities on Voeld are even thinner, but if he’s reading between the lines, she was able to do the same there, clearing away the storms that made the place fucking unlivable for anyone without angaran tolerance for the cold.

There’s a vault here on Kadara; he may not know where it is, but he can put one and one and one together to make three monoliths the same as the next village idiot. If she can restart that- _God,_ if she could clear the water here, it’d be such a slap in Sloane’s arrogant face. Sloane built her power base on being the biggest, baddest, and most importantly, _most useful_ person on the planet, but if Ryder could tug a few bricks away from that tower, it wouldn’t take much to send it toppling down.

If he can manage to stay in Ryder’s good graces, he might even be able to direct her to some things that could benefit from a Pathfinder’s, ah, _special_ attentions. Specifically, things that Sloane can’t, or won’t, handle herself. It shouldn’t be all that difficult; if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s making himself useful.

It’s not exactly what he planned, months ago when he started this endeavor. He hoped that the kett would keep the Initiative busy enough that he’d have time to oust Sloane and consolidate power before Nexus turned its attention back to the exiles, but that ship has clearly sailed. Everything about Ryder’s file paints a clear picture of a woman who can’t help but get involved, and now that she’s been here and seen the conditions in Kadara Port, she’s not going to just blithely fly away again, never to return. He wouldn’t presume to predict which way she’ll jump, not on such short acquaintance, but she’s going to change things, this Pathfinder. She won’t be able to help herself.

_And it’s my job_ , he thinks, closing out the file with a decisive swipe of his hand, _to make sure she changes things for the better._

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

He’s waiting outside when she leaves the Outcast headquarters the next morning, a veritable storm cloud of temper over her head. He sighs with the pleasure of a plan coming together and whistles lightly to get her attention.

She pauses and glances over at him. He wiggles his fingers in a wave. Her lips twitch, and then she shakes her head and shoves her hands in her pockets, ambling over like she has all the time in the world.

“I should have known,” she sighs, when she’s within earshot. “How long have you been lurking?”

He grins lazily back at her. He’s got no intention of admitting that he’s been here an hour or more, waiting for her to get out. “Have a nice chat?”

“Oh, yeah. Very friendly.”

He chuckles at the banked frustration in her voice. He’d pay a pretty penny to to know what was said in there—and will, if he can find a good proxy to approach the tech who keeps the security footage—but still, he can guess well enough how it went. “Don’t worry. I found a workaround.”

Her eyes narrow. “Let me guess. It comes with strings attached.”

_Bless her suspicious little soul._ “Not any new ones,” he says, faking offense as he straightens away from his lazy lean against the post. “Remember, Evfra wants him alive.” _I’m here for the Resistance, remember? Definitely no motives of my own. Just a free agent, serving the same end goals as you, nothing to see here, etc, etc._

“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten. If I wanted him dead, I would have taken Sloane’s deal.”

He tries not to boggle too obviously, but- Sloane made her an _offer_? That’s not like Dear Leader, not like her at all.

_Feeling the pressure, Your Highness?_ He simply has to get his hands on that security footage. For his own entertainment, if nothing else.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” he says, returning his attention to the matter at hand. Ryder’s not the sort of woman one wants to ignore, after all. “When you get inside, give him this.” He hands her the device, and she palms it quickly, wrist tilted to keep it out of easy view from any overly-interested bystanders. “That’ll eat through whatever Sloane’s holding him in, and it can’t be traced back to us. A Resistance agent will be waiting to pick him up.”

She considers the device, and the capsules within, head tilted, thumb rubbing over the delivery mechanism. “SAM?”

Reyes keeps his face still, concealing his surprise. Nothing he’d read indicated that the Pathfinder AI was still up and running; all things considered, he’d assumed it would have died with her father. Clearly he was mistaken. Although the mission team would have had at least a basic implant, wouldn’t they, to stay in contact in the field? Perhaps they were able to make some aftermarket modifications to handle full integration. If so, it would explain her ability to interface with Remnant technology, a lot better than just some one-in-a-trillion quirk of biology.

It also means that he’s going to have to be very careful in his dealings with her, very careful indeed. It’s hard to know just what advantages SAM’s presence would confer, but if she doesn’t at least have some kind of biometric sensor running, she’s nowhere near as smart as he was giving her credit for. Just in case, he’ll have to be a little more circumspect about lying to her directly.

Whatever response the AI makes is lost on him, of course, but he does see Ryder’s sudden snort, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Nice,” she says, and closes her hand over the device, shoving it into the pocket of her jacket. “Must have been work, putting your hands on this. It’s illegal in… four systems, back home? Or is it five?”

“It’s a good thing, then, that those laws don’t apply in Andromeda, isn’t it?” He moves swiftly on before she can think of a reply. “There’s a maintenance shaft around the corner. Sending you the access codes… Now. There, that’ll get you inside.”

Her omni-tool blinks to show the message received, but she doesn’t move to check. Smart enough not to open the file in broad daylight; someone raised her right. “And once I’m inside?”

He smiles amiably and lets his gaze skim appreciatively over her frame, pausing on the curve of her breasts only long enough to get noticed before lingering over her well-muscled thighs. “You look like you’d be able to... handle the rest.”

She doesn’t bristle at the point-blank innuendo, as he more than half-expects. Instead an indulgent half-smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, and she shifts back onto her heel, folding her arms loosely over her chest. “Oh, I’ve been known to _handle_ a situation or two, in my day.”

_Why, Pathfinder,_ he thinks, delighted. The last thing one expects, when poking the tiger in her den, is to have her poke _back._ “I’ll certainly have to keep that in mind.”

Her eyes narrow playfully. “You should,” she says, her raspy voice dropped nearly to a purr. “Especially since you left me with the bill yesterday.”

Oh, he _likes_ this one. He hadn’t been sure that he would, after yesterday’s meeting; she’ll be _effective_ , most certainly, but he hadn’t expected Alec Ryder’s daughter to have much in the way of a sense of humor. “Oh, I _do_ apologize,” he says, ostentatiously insincere. “I’m usually the model gentleman.”

Ryder’s grin gets a little wider in response. “I don’t believe you.”

“Because I’m lying,” he says easily, and feels like he won something when it wrings a warm chuckle out of her. “When you’re done, come to Tartarus,” he invites, with the air of a man making an impulsive offer, as if she hasn’t just handed him the opening he wanted on a silver platter. “First round’s on me. I promise.”

“We’ll see,” she warns, but she’s still definitely smiling. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Too late,” he warns, and she walks away laughing.

Well. It’s a nice laugh, at least.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It takes four hours and the better part of his ready stash of credits to get his hands on the security footage from the throne room, but it’s all worth it for the moment when he queues it up on his omni-tool and sees Ryder, with the little head tilt he’d rapidly coming to associate with _trouble,_ say, “That’s quite the throne. Should I bow? Kiss your ring?”

_Well!_ Apparently, he shouldn’t have worried too much about whether or not Ryder would find a way to ingratiate herself with Kadara’s leading lady. That chip on her shoulder was more than ready to do all the work for him.

Sloane, of course, reacts about as well as he would expect, which is to say: not at all. The conversation predictably devolves from there. Reyes watches it through three times—stopping once to laugh himself sick at Ryder’s exaggerated curtsy on her way out the door; _God,_ but he’s going to enjoy working with that woman—occasionally pausing or slowing down the playback to wring every bit of nuance from tone and expression before he finally closes the file and sits back, drink in his hand.

So. Sloane was determined to push through with Terev’s execution, because she didn’t want to piss off the local angara. No surprise there; sentiment has not been going her way, lately, and the latest rise in ‘protection fees’ have left everyone feeling a little bit raw. There’s nothing quite like a good public execution to promote community togetherness.

Neither is he surprised that she was willing to deal with the Pathfinder; her position is too precarious at present to risk antagonizing the Nexus, especially backed by a fledgling colony and the support of the angaran government. Sloane took all the weapons she could get her hands on when she left, but an outpost means that Nexus will have the supplies to manufacture more, and the arrival of the _Hyperion_ means that numbers are very definitively on the Initiative's side. She has to be getting worried about fighting a war on two fronts. It was easy enough to make a token effort to appease the Pathfinder, just enough so that she could say she tried when Ryder inevitably turned it down.

No, the real surprise from that little encounter was the bombshell Ryder oh-so-casually dropped into the negotiations. So Terev had information about the kett flagship, hmm? Reyes almost regrets that he didn’t find an opportunity to interrogate the man himself, while he was still within reach, but Ryder presumably got what she needed, and it’s information that’s better served in the hands of a Pathfinder, anyway. He doesn’t have the attention to spare from Kadara just now, and no influence offworld even if he did. Knowing that the Nexus is planning to move against the kett, on the other hand... now, that _is_ useful. Any kind of full-scale commitment of Initiative forces would free up some room for enterprising third parties to move without the militia’s knowledge, which could be invaluable for his operations.

Even more valuable is the fact that Sloane will almost certainly be thinking along the same lines. She’ll soon be marshaling to commit her resources skyward, which means less pressure on his people in the Badlands- _and_ the Outcasts will have work for a talented smuggler, especially with a lot of connections offworld. It’s a perfect opportunity.

He lifts his drink in silent toast to Sara Ryder. Two days in port, and she’s already proven invaluable to his operations. If only all his contacts were so useful.

He can’t wait to see what she’ll do with some room to work.


	2. Two

Reyes didn’t really doubt Ryder would take him up on his offer. He proved useful on their first joint venture, after all, and he knows it’s not as if she has friends lining up around the block. Even the more enterprising of the free agents, who’d normally be all-too-eager to make the acquaintance of some fresh meat, would hesitate to cross Sloane on this one. If she wants to learn her way around Kadara, he’s really her only option.

Still, he’s a little surprised by how quickly she comes to seek him out. Not two hours after he gets confirmation from the Resistance that Terev is off-planet, there’s a knock at his door.

“It’s open,” he calls, swapping hastily from Crux’s latest report to a somewhat more innocuous list of shipping manifests, and smiles with real pleasure when the door slides open to reveal his visitor. “Pathfinder! What an unexpected surprise.”

“Well, it’s rude to refuse an invitation," she drawls, and nods diffidently towards the seat across the table from him. “That offer of a first round still on the table?”

She’s made a much better attempt at blending in today; her mismatched hardsuit is nearly a twin those worn by his operatives, and her patched and faded underarmor looks like it’s seen better days. In fact, the only gear on her worth more than a handful of credits is the slick angaran pistol strapped to her thigh, and from what he’s heard, she probably earned that the old-fashioned way. _Honestly, you’d think the Initiative could afford some better equipment for their best and brightest, at least._

Still, it’s a surprisingly good look on her. The heavy layers of armor make her stocky frame look even more well-muscled, and the dull red of the nightclub lighting paints strange shadows over the soft curve of her tattooed jaw, cuts hollows into her deepset eyes. She looks… different, somewhat, from the clever, self-contained woman he met before. Dangerous.

Almost as dangerous, he’s sure, as she actually is.

“It most certainly is,” he assures, only a little slow off the mark. Luckily, she didn’t seem to have noticed him gawking at her, which is all to the better. It's not as if she's not worth staring at, of course—but it’s not exactly the impression he wants to give. He gestures expansively at the table, where the half-full bottle sits next to the remains of his dinner and a haphazard stack of glasses he keeps for the rare times that clients absolute _have_ to bother him in person. “Quite literally, as you can see.”

Her startled snort of laughter looks like it’s punched out of her, and she drops gracelessly into the chair on the other side of the table, no further invitation needed. “Please tell me you didn’t plan that one. Lie to me, if you have to.”

If his answering grin is unflatteringly surprised, well, she doesn’t seem to notice. For some reason, she’s the last person he’d pictured appreciating a good pun. “Purely spontaneous,” he promises. “You can never predict where inspiration will strike.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” She hovers a hand over the bottle, looking at him in silent question, then at his amused nod pours a generous measure into the second glass. “Although I probably shouldn’t complain about your plans, considering how the last one worked out.”

He shrugs modestly, as if arranging the jailbreak and subsequent Resistance handoff had been merely a lark, rather than a series of expensive favors he might yet have cause to regret, before this is over. Still, worth it for this: the Pathfinder, in his humble room, smiling at him across the rim of her glass and well-inclined to come to him with any future needs. “Speaking of which, I got word from one of my colleagues. Vehn Terev made it off Kadara. He’s a free man, thanks to you.”

Her smile gets a little wider. “You helped. A little.”

He doesn’t give her the satisfaction of rising to the bait, just smirks back lazily around a sip of his drink. “Always nice to be recognized.”

“So.” Ryder slouches back in her chair, cradling her glass in between gloved hands. “How’s the independent contractor business in Kadara these days?”

Small talk. Somehow, he wouldn’t have expected it of her.

Still, there’s nothing else more important to hold his attention this evening, and it’s not like it’s a _hardship_ to chat with a pretty, well-armed lady. Ryder’s considerably less likely to shoot him in the back than most of his social circle, too, which is a novel experience. He has the time.

“Lucrative,” he drawls, and lets her lead him into a meandering discussion that takes them through everything from his recruitment into as a Resistance agent through his reasons for leaving the Nexus, as well as another glass and a half of Kian's best 'shine.

Not that she makes him do all the talking, either. The rendition of her first contact with the angara (exaggerated, he's _mostly_ sure, for effect) takes almost half an hour, involves numerous semi-explicit gestures and startlingly effective sound effects, and has him nearly in stitches from laughing so hard. The retelling of her assault on the kett stronghold on Voeld takes even longer, and gets involved enough that she ends up ditching her gloves and clearing the table in order to better sketch out the attack vector using the silverware. (The liquor bottle, of course, is the communications tower.)

Still, he finds himself talking quite a bit more than he would have thought- and not as much about Kadara Port as he would have expected, considering. Ryder does ask a few questions along the expected lines—which vendors are the most like to deal straight and which ones are crooks even by Kadara standards, and which palms to grease to avoid problems with docking privileges, etc—but it’s nothing she couldn’t have figured out on her own, without too much difficulty. Mostly, what Ryder seems to be interested in is _him._

He’d chalk it up to base flattery, the new girl trying to butter up the local for advantages down the line, and he’d approve wholeheartedly if that’s what it was, but he just can’t see it. She’s clever, certainly, but she doesn’t have that kind of... calculation, perhaps. Reyes knows his own kind when he sees them, and she’s many things, Sara Ryder—smart, playful, with an offbeat sense of humor and an intriguing streak of ruthless pragmatism she definitely didn’t learn in the Alliance—but she’s not that.

It's oddly... refreshing. He can't even remember the last time he shared a drink with somebody so utterly lacking in ulterior motives, and it almost makes him sorry that he can't say the same for himself. In other circumstances, he might even look forward to an evening like this for nothing more than the simple pleasure of her company.

But these aren't other circumstances, and Reyes does, after all, have a job to do, so eventually he winds the conversation back around to the business at hand. “Word on the street is that you’re planning to head out into the Badlands tomorrow.”

“Oh, is that the word?” Ryder looks a little softer around the edges than when she started, though whether that can be attributed to her good mood or the moonshine is up for debate. “Let me guess, a little bird told you?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Generally, a reliable one.”

“Well, you don’t have to fire this songbird just yet. They’ word’s good. I got clearance from Sloane to go past the gates this afternoon.”

“I’m surprised you waited for permission.”

“Well, if Sloane got annoyed and tried to shoot me out of the sky, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy these little chats,” Ryder says, smirking, “so yes, I waited. Despite what everyone seems to think, I’m not actually interested in provoking a war between Nexus and Kadara. We’re a little too busy getting our asses kicked by the kett.”

“It’s important to have priorities.”

“Right? Who has the time, honestly.” She grins at him, brief and bright, and then it fades as quickly as it came. “Anyway. Might’ve pushed the issue if Sloane had kept me waiting much longer—see above, re: time—but a day or so is small potatoes in the scheme of things. Vetra spent most of it handling, and I quote, ‘completely legitimate business deals,’ anyway, so it’s not like the time was wasted.”

“And tomorrow?”

“I’ll try not to waste tomorrow, either,” she says with a straight face, and laughs at the annoyed look he gives her. “I’ve got a couple threads to tug. Making friends, influencing people...” She spreads her hands in a shrug. “You know the drill.”

As answers go, it isn’t one, but he wouldn’t have expected anything less. As much as she’s relaxed over the course of the evening, he’s also noticed that she kept her stories carefully scrubbed of any sensitive information that could cause problems if it got into general circulation. Sensible; he wouldn’t tell him anything of importance, either.

“I guess I should let you get some rest, then,” he says, and doesn’t have to feign his reluctance to see their evening end. “I’d hate to interfere with Pathfinder business.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, but she’s smiling.

Then she sighs and sets down her empty glass, straightening out of the relaxed slouch she’s had for the last hour or more. “Seriously, though, I really should get going. Drack’s had just enough time to get himself in trouble, so I should probably collect him back to the ship before he lands us all in hot water.”

“A Pathfinder’s work is never done,” he says, and gets a chuckle. It's as good a moment as any. “Hey, listen. Ryder.”

She pauses, halfway through getting up. “Yeah?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but… you’re not really liked here. In Kadara Port.”

She blinks at him. “Ouch.”

“What I’m saying is- you need a friend.” He struggles to keep from sounding too eager, just another charming, third-rate wheeler and dealer looking for an in with a well-connected meal ticket. “Someone on the inside to help you out. I can be that guy.”

She tilts her head, almost exactly the same way she did before she mouthed off to Sloane in the throne room. “And what sort of strings would be attached to this arrangement, huh?”

She doesn’t sound annoyed yet, which means he hasn’t overplayed his hand. If she was angry at the presumption, he’d know. If there’s one thing he’s learned over the past couple hours, it’s that what you see is what you get with Ryder. It makes things a lot less complicated than he’s used to. “No new ones,” he says, smiling to take the sting out of it, and she huffs a laugh in recognition of his earlier promise. “I won’t try to compromise your shiny Nexus morals, if that’s what you’re worried about. Life in Kadara is dangerous; I just like knowing I have a very capable friend I could call on if things get… heated.”

“Your flattery doesn’t work on me,” she says, with the exact smile of people everywhere when flattery is working on them. “And what could I expect in exchange for this... friendship?”

“Whatever you need, of course,” he says, spreading his hands. “I know everyone worth knowing, and anything I don’t already already know, I can find out. You need intel on exiles, Sloane-” _The Collective._ “-whatever, just come to me.”

“Mm.” She drums her fingers on her thigh, thinking it over, and he’s not ashamed to say he holds his breath just a little. He doesn’t _need_ her cooperation in order to make use of her, but it would certainly help. Ryder could be a hell of a weapon in the right hands; he wants to make sure that she’s carefully aimed.

And, he has to admit, it’d be a shame to miss out on another evening like this one. Crime’s a dirty business and politics are worse; it’s rare that he has the chance to relax and enjoy the company of a business associate. Usually he’s too busy making sure no one tries to shoot him in the back.

Her smile, when it comes, is as breathtaking as it is unexpected. “Sure, I’ll take that deal,” she says easily. She laughs at the expression on his face. “I mean, I already owed you a favor or two because of that business with Vehn, but if you want to throw in some advice to sweeten the pot, I’m not gonna say no.”

He can only shake his head. For all he feels like he’s gotten to know her fairly well so far, he still can’t quite predict which way she’s going to jump. “I’ve been compensated for that already.”

“Sure, you’re square with Evfra. Doesn’t mean my tab is settled. And something you should know about me, Vidal: I always pay my debts.”

Well, as the lady says- he’s not going to say no to that. “An important quality in a friend,” he says, and holds out his hand. “It is, and I can say this honestly, a pleasure doing business with you, Pathfinder.”

Her grip is just as steady as the first time, her palm hot against his through the thin fabric of his gloves. “Likewise,” she says, and her smile is vid-star bright as she stands to pull her own gloves back on. “If I have any questions, I’ll let you know.”

“You can usually find me here, most nights.” It’s strange, having to tilt his head back to look up at her. “Although I’m going to be out of town for the next couple of days. Business. You know how it is.”

She smiles at him over the mag-seals on her gloves. “Aw, but what if I need you before then?”

At some point she’s going to have to stop handing him these beautiful openings; he’s going to get spoiled and then where will he be? “Well, I mean- you _do_ have my comm number.” As if it were pure coincidence, and he hadn’t deliberately set up the yesterday’s handoff to have an excuse to send her intel directly. “Use it anytime, day or night. I don’t exactly keep banker’s hours.”

“Mm.” Her eyes are half-lidded with amusement, and he could swear that they flicker down to his mouth for the briefest of moments before she meets his gaze once more. “I might just take you up on that.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It takes him a couple hours to catch up, after she leaves. Not that he considers the time wasted, of course, but it does leave him behind on a few key matters of business that need to be handled before he goes offworld. It's a terrible fucking time to be going out of port, but it can't be helped. He won't say no when the Outcasts come calling, not when it could risk losing him the plausible excuse to be seen moving on the edges of their operation. He should be able to pick up some more building materials while he's out, too, so the trip won't be a total waste, but- ugh. The last place he wants to be when Ryder is starting to make waves is _out of fucking contact._

With that in mind, he makes sure to leave very strict instructions with Crux. One, nobody does _anything_ , up to and including picking off Outcast stragglers, without express permission from a district commander. And two, the Pathfinder is not to be touched. He knows Kian got the word out on day one, but he reiterates this point, just to make sure it sticks. He's not really any closer to figuring out where Ryder's sympathies lie on Kadara politics, but he's damned sure he's not going to exacerbate the situation by having his people take potshots at her while she's trying to do her job.

He leaves the instructions in the usual place just after breakfast and makes the pickup in the Badlands, noting the navpoint to add to his map when he returns. So far he hasn't caught the Outcasts using the same drop point twice, but that's not as secure as they think it is. Pressures from his operatives have kept them from branching too far out of their comfort zone, and every new dead drop just leaves him with a better map of their territory.

It's times like these that he's reminded that Sloane, for all her bluster and swagger, is actually quite new to this criminal business. She's running her campaign like one of the pirates she once hunted for the Alliance, not seeming to realize that if the Alliance was on their tail, they probably weren't very good at being criminals. If her folly hadn't inspired her to such heights of fucking brutality, he'd almost find it funny.

It takes over an hour to pack everything into the shuttle, and he checks his messages while the loading arm is doing its work. Automated confirmation that his instructions have been removed from the dead drop, good, a handful of contracts from some of his usual clients that he tags as acknowledged to review later, another couple of hopefuls passed along through semi-reliable contacts he’ll have to vet when he gets back, and a few fishing expeditions that he merrily deletes unread. He might have been less cautious when he was first getting established here on Kadara, but by now an approach that doesn’t go through proper channels is a red flag. Either they’re not connected enough to secure an introduction, which means they’re not going to be worth his time, or their cargo is hot enough that they don’t want to involve more than the bare minimum, in which case it’s not worth the risk. Honor among thieves is a pretty phrase that doesn’t, in his experience, mean a great deal in reality. He has enough of a target on his back as the Charlatan; there’s no reason to take stupid risks with his civilian identity for a few extra credits.

The message from Ryder comes in just as he’s finishing up. He almost ignores it, busy with the last few steps of his final preflight check, but then he thinks, _but what if it’s her?_ and pulls it up on the onboard dash.

It’s from her.

_Any chance you got a LK on some fuckhead named Johan? Warden says he holes up in the Badlands, no idea where. And I’ve been warned not to drive around blind._

He can only imagine the way that conversation went. The wry twist of humor on the last phrase is so clear he can almost hear it in her voice, like she's standing right next to him.

_‘Last-known?’_ , he types quickly, pulling up his map on his omni-tool. He’s almost certain Crux had the base scouted, but it’s fairly far out of their usual territory. _Pathfinder, don’t tell me you’re secretly an officer of the law. It might break my poor heart._

_They wouldn’t have me as a gift,_ comes her response, so quickly she must have been waiting. _Your heart is safe._

_Oh, I don’t know about that._

_So far, I’m seeing a whole lot of flirting and not a lot of useful intel._

He laughs. _But isn’t that why you contacted me?_ he replies, and then, before she can fire back something sarcastic and probably devastating to his ego, he sends the coordinates. _There, let it never be said that I don’t deliver on my promises. Take the east road around the lee of the mountain, and watch the sightlines. Johan keeps snipers on his crew._

A pause. _Know the location of the Hope Diamond while you’re at it?_

_There, I’m afraid you’re on your own._

_Jeez, what use are you then?_ And then, a moment later: _But seriously, thanks._

He smiles to himself as he goes back to running the preflight check. _What else are friends for?_

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It takes five days to get to the Remav system, talk his way past a bunch of very twitchy miners with high-powered rifles, make the exchange, and then fly back. He has to keep his long-range comms on standby the entire time, and it makes the back of his teeth itch, being out of contact for so long. Logically, he knows that Ryder isn’t going to stumble onto his identity the moment his back is turned, not when Sloane’s best efforts have turned up nothing but smoke and mirrors, but he can’t help the feeling that something’s going to go wrong. When dropping a stick of dynamite into the pool, you can’t always predict how far the ripples are going to reach.

_It will probably be fine,_ he assures himself that night, stretched out in the tiny bunk in the back and staring at the dark ceiling. _What’s the worst that could happen?_

Which means he has only himself to blame when he returns home to casualty reports.

“What the _fuck,_ ” he says, five minutes later on an anonymized call to Crux. “Was I unclear in my instructions? Did someone decide to loosely interpret ‘the Pathfinder is not to be touched’ as ‘yes, please, do shoot at the Pathfinder, with my compliments?’”

“Your instructions were delayed,” Crux says, sounding grim even through the patchy signal of the scrambler. “The courier ran afoul of an Outcast patrol just outside the city gates. Dante had to retrieve the message from his remains personally.”

“God _damn_ it.” He closes his eyes against the futile certainty that he should have done something more before blithely flying away. Nevermind that there wasn’t anything ‘blithe’ about it, or that if there was anything else he could have done he would have _already done it._

He fucking _hates_ it when his enemies decide to get smart on him. This is Kaetus’s doing, he just knows it. Fucking turian.

“How bad is it?”

“Not as bad as it could have been, honestly. The casualties you saw were the worst of it, and most of them were new recruits.”

Four dead. She’s right; it could have been worse. Still. Things are precarious enough that he can’t afford to lose warm bodies, not even raw, untrained operatives. Especially not to entirely preventable mistakes. “What’s the rest of it?”

“Two injured, and significant structural damage to one of the signal towers in the northern quadrant,” Crux rattles off, sounding relieved now that he's back to his usual even-keeled self. “Apparently one of the guards was taking warning shots at the Pathfinder’s vehicle. She responded by ramming the support strut at full speed.”

Reyes scrubs his hands over his face, torn between laughter and annoyance. Of course she did. “And the injuries?”

“Occurred when the impact jostled them out of the tower,” Crux says with a shrug. “The Pathfinder apparently offered assistance, but they told her, and I quote, ‘go fuck yourself sideways.’”

He sighs. _Youths._ “And then?”

“She shrugged and drove off.”

Well, that was remarkably accommodating of her. He can’t say he would have done the same in those circumstances. Ryder must really want to make a good impression on the locals. “Was there anything _else_?”

Crux hesitates. “Did you finish reading my brief?”

“Not yet,” he says dryly, “I was somewhat distracted by the combat logs. What happened?”

“Octans spotted the Pathfinder’s vehicle parked outside the western exit in Draullir for about three hours yesterday.”

_Fuck._ “Did she find the entrance?”

“No, but she and her team got pretty deep into the caves. They seemed to be looking for that prospector that got lost down here last week, but our generators are all over the path. I doubt she'll buy that the prospector put all those generators out on his own.”

“No,” he sighs, “probably not.” He runs his fingers through his hair, cursing to himself. This wasn’t exactly the first impression he wanted the Collective to make, that’s for fucking sure, but it couldn’t be helped. _Think, Vidal, think._ “This was yesterday, you said?”

“Yessir.”

Ryder’s not the type to waste time. And, he’s fairly confident, not the type to let a mystery stand. “I think it’s probably safe to say that you can expect a visit from the Pathfinder sometime within the next day or two. Three, at most.”

Crux nods with her usual equanimity. “How would you like me to proceed when she arrives?”

_Well, try not to shoot at her, that would be a good start,_ Reyes thinks bitterly. He doesn’t say it out loud. It’s not Crux’s fault that his message was delayed. It’s his, for going against his better instincts and being out of contact at such a sensitive juncture.

“As planned,” he says. “Nothing’s changed. Allow her full access, including the terminals. There’s nothing on those we can’t afford for her to see.” He drums his fingers on the arm of the couch. “Also, don’t volunteer information, but make sure to be absolutely honest if she asks. If you’re not comfortable answering a question, say so. It’s likely she has biometric surveillance.”

“I’ll put the word out.”

What else, what else… Ah. “If you can arrange to get her assistance on some minor task, do that. If she accepts, offer payment for her services, but don’t press if she declines. We want her to feel as if we’re in her debt.”

“Understood,” Crux says. “I’ll make sure everyone is briefed.”

“Good.”

He cuts the connection and sits there for a moment, brooding. _What’s the worst that could happen, indeed._ Logically, he knows that jinxes are a silly superstition and don’t actually exist, but he’s also a pilot.

He totally fucking jinxed himself.

_Nothing to be done about it now, Reyes my lad. All you can do is manage the situation moving forward._

He checks the time on his chrono- still fairly early, especially by Kadara time. If he's lucky, he can catch her before she makes it back through the gate.

Ryder's smiling when she answers her comm, and a tiny spark of tension he didn't realize he was carrying bleeds out of him at the sight. Whatever else she might have discovered on her expeditions this past week, his second life wasn't one of them.

Not that it would prove overly-ruinous if she did, eventually. She has enough reason to dislike Sloane that he can be fairly confident she wouldn't oppose him, even if she's never inclined to make an ally out of him. But he doubts she'd be as inclined to share a friendly drink with the head of a criminal syndicate as she was with an unaffiliated smuggler. He could work without it, of course, but why deny himself the pleasure of her company while he still has the chance?

"Reyes. You're back already?"

Not soon enough, as it turned out, but he's not going to let that ruin his good mood now that he has her on the line. "Back and ready to wash away the taste of recycled air, if you'd care to join me."

"Oh," she says, and he knows what her answer is going to be before she says it. "Love to, especially if you're buying, but I'm not headed back into the city tonight."

He feels his eyebrows crawl up his forehead. "Camping in the Badlands? Why, Pathfinder, you should have warned me you had a death wish. I would have prepared a speech for your wake."

“Very funny,” she says, but her eyes are dancing. “I’d argue that anyone trying to attack a camp with a thousand-year-old krogan who just wants to get some sleep pretty much has it coming, but whatever. I’m not making camp tonight, anyway. We’re rendezvousing with the _Tempest_ as soon as we make it to open ground, heading back to the Nexus tonight.”

“So soon,” he says, as if his heart isn’t suddenly going triple-time. _Something’s gone wrong. Something you couldn’t know, couldn’t anticipate._ “Was it something I said?”

She laughs it off, running one gloved hand through her sweat-dampened hair. “Hardly. Just a little something for the eggheads back home.” Her grin turns flirtatious. “If I’d known you’d be back so soon, I might have dawdled.”

“You don’t have to flatter me, Pathfinder. I’m already charmed.” He lounges back in his seat, mind working furiously. So she found something, or confirmed something, and needs the input of her superiors before she can proceed. It can’t be about Port politics, or she wouldn’t have delayed this long. There was something out in the Badlands that she needed, first. Furthering her Remnant research, perhaps? Or something related to her mysterious intel from Terev; after all, the man was loose in the Badlands for weeks before Sloane’s goons finally hunted him down. He could have hidden anything out there. “Well, I hope this isn’t farewell. Kadara would be bereft without you.”

“No worries there. I’m nowhere near done with...” She grins. “Kadara.”

He has to laugh. Every single time, she’s right there, picking up what he puts down. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Distantly, he hears a shout from her end of the line, and the distinct roar of sublight engines. She glances over her shoulder, gestures something rude to someone just off camera, and then turns back, rueful smile firmly in place. “That’s my cue,” she says. “See you in a couple weeks, Reyes Vidal. Don’t get into too much trouble while I’m gone.”

“I make no promises,” he says, and she laughs as she cuts the connection.

Well. That could have gone better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On my second playthrough I spent a lot of time boggling at the number of Collective operatives that just up and shoot at me. I get that it's gameplay vs. narrative, but dude, Reyes. Not cool. A girl could start to think you don't actually _want_ my help.
> 
> At least they kinda lampshade it a little when you find the hideout and Lynx tells you the message hasn't gotten through to the others yet, but still.


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: discussion of torture in the context of examining a murder victim.

The day the Pathfinder comes back to Kadara, there’s a murder in the Port.

Not exactly an unusual occurrence, on the face of it; people kill each other all the time on Kadara. Mostly outside the city walls, but the Port sees her fair share of deaths, and for the most part, nobody says much about it. Financial disputes can get tricky when the margin for survival is so low, and nowhere in the cluster has quite so much active finance as Kadara. Generally, when deals go south, the remaining involved parties handle the matter themselves, pay their tithe to the Outcasts for the offense, and everyone goes on their merry way.

This is different.

For one thing, it’s not the first. Sloane’s been trying to clean them up as they’re found, so it’s hard for Reyes to get an exact count, but he’s fairly certain this is at least the sixth victim, maybe even the seventh. For another, the killings themselves have gotten bolder: the last two were left near the main airlock, and this one was found right outside Kralla’s Song. And while normally he applauds boldness, in this case he wishes the perpetrators were a little more circumspect. Leaving the victims _right_ under the nose of the Outcast guards is such a blatant challenge that there's really only one likely suspect.

Which is to say, _him._

Which is, of course, a _big fucking problem_. He’s worked too hard and come too far to lose momentum to some _cocky upstart_ with an axe to grind. It's critical that he finds out who's actually doing this and puts a stop to it, or he's going to lose all the ground he's painstakingly gained in the war of public opinion over the last year.

Reyes is nearby when this newest body is discovered, taking care of some business in the markets, but not close enough to get a good look at the body before the guards close ranks. _Damn it._ One of his men will be able to pull any data they collect from the Outcast system later, but so far they've been a lot more concerned with hiding the evidence than examining it. And why wouldn't they be? Sloane's not the one suffering under false accusations. She might get some dings from her failure to protect her people, but the Collective is coming out looking worse and she knows it.

_Unless…_

He almost thinks he's imagining things when he sees the flash of blue out of the corner of his eye. Like the force of his wishful thinking might, somehow, have conjured her out of thin air. But sure as the sunrise, it’s none other than the Pathfinder herself, hands shoved into her pockets and shoulders hunched tight against the press of bystanders. As he watches, she rocks up onto her toes to see over the shoulder of a much taller angara in her way, and catches sight of him across the crowd. His pulse suddenly speeds up, for no reason at all that he can discern.

A huge grin spreads across her face, and she pulls one hand out of her pocket to give him a dorky little wave. He waves back, not quite able to contain his smile in return. He taps his ear, and she squints at him a moment before nodding sharply in comprehension.

"Well, fancy seeing you here," comes her drawl in his ear a moment later.

"Ryder. Your timing is impeccable."

"I bet you say that to all the girls." She peers at him across the crime scene. "This sort of thing happen often in these parts? 'Cause I gotta tell you, Vidal, you guys are really living down to Nexus expectations right about now."

"However will I sleep at night." Her little chortle in his ear seems closer, somehow, more intimate for all that she's still standing a dozen-odd people away. "Often enough, though, lately. It seems there's a person of ill intent among our merry little band."

"This, this right here, this is my shocked face."

Actually, she mostly looks like she's fighting down a smile. "I've been doing some digging," he says, manfully electing to ignore that, "murder's so bad for business, you know, but I keep getting stonewalled by our friends in the guard there. Shamefully, they're somewhat lacking in cooperative spirit."

Her sigh feathers down the line. "Let me guess. Job for a Pathfinder?"

He very carefully doesn't smile. "You're the one who wanted to…. how did you put it? 'Make friends, influence people?'"

"Don't quote me back at me. It's not as attractive as you think it is."

_You keep telling yourself that._ "I can get information on the previous victims, if you and your SAM will get scans of this one," he tempts. _Which will also give me a chance to find out if the infamous Pathfinder AI is all it's cracked up to be._ "We can meet later to... exchange intel."

She makes a show of considering it, like there was ever any doubt she'd turn him down. "Fine," she grumbles. "But drinks are _definitely_ on you."

"I wouldn't dream of suggesting otherwise." She makes a face at him across the crowd, and he doesn't even try to stop the urge to wink back at her. "Until later, Ryder."

"Yeah, yeah. Smooth-talking asshole," she mutters, and cuts the connection over the sound of his startled laugh. A moment later, she slips her hands back into her pockets and starts to sidle up to one of the guards, her face fixed into an expression of nonthreatening good cheer.

Reyes leaves her to it with a smile and a shake of his head, slips away with the slowly dispersing crowd, and starts making his way to the Outcast headquarters. At least one of the other victims was angaran, wasn't he? Perhaps Keema will have something he's missed.

It's a place to start, anyway. Wouldn't do to let Ryder think he's not keeping up his end of the bargain.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It's almost sunset by the time he makes his way back to Tartarus for the evening, but he has solid profiles on all seven victims, and the beginnings of a theory. Some of it will depend on what Ryder found on the most recent victim, but if his instincts are right, this whole mess might be a lot simpler than he'd originally considered.

Kian flags him down before he can climb the stairs to his room. "You've got company," the bartender tells him, jerking his head towards the back corner. "She came in an hour ago, said to let you know when you got in."

She's earlier than he expected—or maybe he's late. Keema kept him longer than he anticipated, but as always, her intel was good. "She's been keeping herself occupied?"

"Bought a round for herself and one for Derc, 'settling up business' she said. She's been on her own the last while, though. Thought I was going to have to warn some of the regulars off her, but it seems someone else already took care of it."

Reyes intercepts his interrogative glance with a bland one of his own. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. But if someone _did_ put the word out, it was only to save the poor fools from themselves."

Kian snorts and goes back to wiping down the bar. "You've got a loaded mag there," he says. "Take care it doesn't backfire on you like the last one."

Ah, Zia. So pretty, so poisonous, so poisonously stupid. "I don't believe that's a worry," he says dryly. "Do me a favor and send up a bottle, will you? We've got business to discuss."

"Anything I should know about?"

He considers running his theory by Kian, but- No. He wants to see what Ryder has to say, first. "Still fine-tuning the details, but you'll be the first to know."

"Understood," Kian says, and fetches an unlabeled bottle from under the bar. "Good luck."

Ryder's at the far end of the lower bar when he goes looking, scrolling through something on her omni-tool and swinging one sneakered foot below the bottom ring of the barstool. No armor today, he can't help but note; she's gone back to the same fashionably scuffed leather jacket from her forays into the Port above. Feeling more confident about navigating the slums? Or just that sure of her ability to handle anyone who bothers her?

"Ryder," he says, but she doesn't seem to hear him, probably due to the speaker pumping what can dubiously be called 'music' directly above her head. "Ryder," he tries again, and when that doesn't work, he carefully puts his hand to her shoulder.

She tenses up fast, biotic energy gathering in the hand curled around her glass, and he goes still. Half-tempted to snatch his hand away, but knowing it'd only startle her further, he gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze instead. "Ryder," he says, a third time, and this time it must penetrate the wall of noise because the biotic field dies away before she even finishes turning to smile up at him.

"Hey," she says, her voice raised just enough to carry over the music. "Starting to worry I'd been abandoned."

"Perish the thought," he says, and gently lets his hand drop away from her shoulder in order to gesture towards the staircase. "Shall we?"

The walls of his room are soundproofed, and Ryder visibly relaxes when he shuts the doors behind her. She shrugs when she catches him watching her. "Sorry about earlier. I get jumpy when I can't hear people coming."

A sensible attitude for someone to have in his line of work—but less common, he'd suspect, for a straight shooter like Ryder. Has she always been like this, or was it the stress of becoming the Pathfinder that left her with such an entirely justifiable streak of paranoia? "I understand completely," he assures her. "It's a healthy attitude to have in these parts."

"No argument from me. Speaking of which…" She holds up her wrist, her omni-tool flaring to life. "You got a holo?"

He does a quick mental sweep over the contents of his desk. He does routine sweeps, and generally won't touch Collective business on anything but his personal omni-tool, but better safe than sorry. "Top left drawer."

She retrieves the holocube—doesn't attempt even a cursory rifle through the drawer while she's at it, he notes with approval—and sets it on the coffee table. "SAM?"

The dead angara appears on the floor of his room, the pool of blue blood disappearing incongruously under his coffee table. Reyes steps carefully over it, circling around the grisly sight to get a feel for the composition. Face down, neck twisted at an improbable angle even for flexible angaran spines, face turned towards… He tilts his head and tries to recreate the scene in his head. Towards the door to Kralla's, then. Coincidence? Or deliberately setting the scene so that someone leaving the bar would come face-to-face with the man's dead, cloudy eyes, his grisly cut-up face?

Hmm, now that he's thinking about it, why slash the face at all? If it was torture, it was clearly an inexpert hand behind the knife. Why risk cutting that close to the mouth, when getting the target to talk is generally the entire point? Anyone with experience would use less-risky places with much greater nerve sensitivity, and if they wanted the psychological impact of cutting the face, an eye or an ear would be just as intimidating without being needlessly damaging. Also, most mercs would start with a beating to soften the target up first, and while the armor covers most of him, Reyes would still expect to see bruises somewhere on his face, hands, or throat.

Actually, he doesn't seem to have any defensive wounds at all, come to think of it. Which is interesting in its own right. Even the most downtrodden in the slums will fight like wild adhi when cornered, so how did the assailants take him without a fight?

"Oblivion, maybe?”

He doesn’t realize he says it aloud until he hears Ryder’s soft noise of amusement, reminding him he’s not alone in the room. “Close, but no cigar.” From the corner of his eye he sees her take a seat—on the second couch, next to his, rather than the chair opposite where she’d sat before—and stretch her legs comfortably out in front of her. “Very high blood alcohol. Probably didn’t have the credits for Oblivion.”

“That hasn’t stopped anyone so far,” he murmurs. He hadn't really expected an answer; everyone knows that handheld scanners can't get that level of detail without specialized medical equipment. _Unless you have an AI to process it for you, apparently. That could be… useful._ "Don't suppose you know what kind?"

"Batarian shard wine," she supplies immediately. "Best guess from the protein markers on the lips and mouth. Couldn't get the vintage on such a quick look, but I'm willing to bet Umi could tell us."

He twists around to give her a speaking look, brows raised. She delicately crosses one booted foot over the other at the ankle and smiles blandly back.

"Not just a pretty face," she says, pointing at the face in question. "Although it doesn't take a genius to put Milky Way booze together with a dead body found in front of a fucking bar. He was drinking there, wasn't he?"

He wants to laugh at the trace of smugness in her voice, her endearing _gotcha_ grin. "Now, now," he chides. "It's your turn to impress. I'd hate to steal your thunder."

She purses her lips skeptically, but when he just looks expectantly back, she snorts and jerks her chin at the holo. "Angaran male, age twenty-four," she rattles off. "Signs of long-term malnutrition and alcohol abuse. Broken neck and lacerations to the face and stomach. Blood on the ground came from the stomach wounds, but cause of death was the snapped neck. Cuts on the face were postmortem."

He holds up a hand before she can continue. "You're sure about the last?"

If it bothers her to be so directly challenged, she doesn't let it show. "Definitely. He bled like a stuck pig, but not from there. You can see it in the way the blood is smeared. Those veins weren't pumping when they opened up his face."

"So it wasn't torture, then," he murmurs, mostly to himself. She nods anyway.

"Just made to look like it. Probably same reason they broke his neck—he would have died from the blood loss in a few minutes anyway, and he sure as fuck wasn't going anywhere. Scare tactics."

"But from who?"

She rolls her shoulders in a shrug. "The Charlatan?" she suggests. "That's what the locals at Kralla's were saying, anyway."

He very carefully doesn't grit his teeth. The whole scene _reeks_ of the overdramatic, but people are laying it at _his_ door? As if the Collective has ever stooped to such lazy, amateurish tactics. "I don't buy it," he says, trying to keep his tone light, thoughtful. _Uninvested._ "The Charlatan is discreet, careful. Leaving bodies to make a statement isn't the Collective's style."

"Well, you'd know better than me, I suppose," she says, a little dubiously. The urge to grit his teeth gets stronger. "Okay, but if not them, then who? There's a limited number of people on this planet who have both a grudge against Sloane Kelly and the means to do something about it, and I've been off-planet."

"Talk like _that_ will get you in trouble around these parts," he warns, but he can feel his annoyance fading somewhat in the face of her cheerful dislike. Not that he ever _doubted_ that she and Sloane would have their differences, but it seems relations between Kadara's Queen and the Pathfinder are even less cordial than he could have hoped.

She smiles tranquilly back at him. "If Sloane hasn't figured out we're not exactly besties, I don't really think there's much hope for her."

True. Ryder isn't what you'd call subtle. "I'm not sure this is about Sloane, anyway. Less than a third of the victims have been Outcasts. If you're trying to send a message to a leader, wouldn't you use her own people?"

"Well, I wouldn't go after someone else to send a message in the first place," she says, with a sharp look, "but sure, I guess that makes sense. It lacks the personal touch. On the other hand, maybe they're the best the killers could get?"

"I don't think so. The killers might have been cocky, but they weren't stupid. They took this fellow right around shift change, when the streets would be mostly empty, and they had to lure him out of the bar." She tilts her head in question, and he grins back at her. "I might have spoken to Umi already. She confirmed that he received a message less than a minute before leaving."

"So, not a random victim. That fits, actually. Look at this." She sits up, and while she doesn't noticeably move her hands or do anything to direct the image, the holo suddenly zooms in on the torso region, magnifying and splitting the image into a stack of component layers. "Look at these stomach wounds. Three hits, right through the three major arteries. Those are precision strikes, with a thin, very sharp blade. And see the armor he's wearing? Organic resin, tough as it comes—but the attackers got in through the gaps between the plating. That takes skill."

He lets out a breath, rocking back onto his heels. "And familiarity?"

She purses her lips, giving the question her full consideration. "With the armor, maybe not. A good targeting VI could do the work for you. With angaran anatomy, though… probably. I only know about it because I made sure to learn the basics in case my crewmate ever needed first aid in the field. Most mercs probably wouldn't bother, and their armor blocks most medical scans." She leans forward, elbows on her knees, her expression intent. "Why? You've got a theory?"

"The beginnings of one," he says modestly. "As I said, it's not really the Charlatan's MO, and it's certainly not yours. If I was a betting man—and I am—I'd say it was the Roekaar."

One startled blink is the only reaction she gives. "Why would the Roekaar be in Kadara Port?"

He's sure she knows the answer as well as he, but if she wants to him to lay it out for her, he's happy to oblige. "It's angaran-built and, before Sloane, angaran-run. I think the Roekaar came here looking for new recruits, and things… got out of hand."

"I'd say that this is a bit more than 'out of hand,' but sure, I follow. What about the angaran victims, though? How do they fit into your theory?"

"That would be what _I_ was working on this afternoon," he says. "All of the deceased angara, including our friend here, were public Milky Way sympathizers. Or in some way supported us." He straightens out of his crouch, rolling his shoulders into a shrug. "It's the only pattern I could find."

Ryder's head tilts back to look up at him. "An angaran port run by aliens _would_ be a prime target for their cause," she admits, after a moment. "And they've got a lot of momentum, but not a lot of victories. At least not against us. They tried to attack Prodromos about a month ago," she says, catching his inquisitive glance. "It didn't go so great."

Somehow, he doubts her knowledge of the incident is third-hand. “That’s about when the attacks in the Port started,” Reyes says. “Perhaps they saw the exiles as an easier target?”

“Maybe.” Ryder rubs her chin, eyes distant. “The timing fits, anyway. Guess your theory's looking pretty fucking plausible after all."

Reyes sighs. “Problem is, we've got no proof. And the Resistance doesn’t want to antagonize the Roekaar.”

She gives him a keen look. "Guessing that's where I come in."

It truly is _such_ a pleasure to work with someone who can keep up with him. "Given what you were able to do here-" And he gestures to the holo on the floor. "-that fancy AI of yours could get the evidence we need to implicate the Roekaar."

She folds her hands together, her expression giving nothing away. "I'm hearing a lot of 'we' here, Vidal. Since when do you care about a few angry angarans muscling in on Sloane Kelly's turf?"

Since those 'angry angarans' threaten everything he's spent the better part of a year building out of blood, sweat and tears, that's fucking when. "I told you earlier," he says, his voice light. "Murder's bad for business. What if the next neck on the chopping block is someone who owes me money? I'm good, Ryder, but I'm not so good I can afford to have clients dropping left and right."

"Mmm," she says. "No concern for your own neck, then?"

He shoots her a flirtatious look from under his lashes. "Not with a big, strong Pathfinder around to protect me."

She manages to maintain her straight face for another moment, two, before she breaks with a snort of laughter, hiding her exasperated expression in her hands as she scrubs them over her face. "Jesus, you're a piece of work," she mutters into her gloved palms, and then her hands drop back into her lap. "So, what, we just wait around for them to strike again? Not wild about that part of the plan."

"I'm not fond of it either, but it's a matter of time either way. You know what you're looking for, now. Next time, you'll get all the proof you need."

She sits back on the couch, crosses her arms over her chest. "You know, I'm not really hearing a good reason why I should be painting a target on _my_ back, instead. I'm already Public Enemy Number One, as far as Akksul's concerned."

He thought she might say that. "You’re the one who said you need all the goodwill you can get,” he argues, as if he doesn’t know that her agreement is a foregone conclusion. She’s got a hero complex- hidden well enough under all her bluster, perhaps, but he knows better. She’s stepped up admirably considering the circumstances of her promotion. She wouldn’t have gone so far if she didn’t care. “People are scared, Ryder. The Outcasts aren't doing anything, the Collective isn't doing anything-" Openly, anyway. "This is your opportunity to win friends in Kadara Port.”

One dark brow creeps upward. “With your help, of course.”

He smiles tranquilly back at her. “I’m a helpful sort of person.”

“Hmm.” She dips her chin, making a show of thinking it over, but he can see a suppressed smile in the dimple that flirts in her cheek, just below the leading edge of her tattoo. “You know, I can’t help but feel like I’m pretty integral to this plan of yours.”

“SAM is integral,” he replies repressively. “ _You’re_ a bonus.”

Her smile proves irrepressible. “Pretty big bonus, is all I’m saying. Just what were you planning to do before I showed up?”

"Oh, you know me, Ryder.” He smiles guilelessly at her, and doesn’t say, _Whatever it takes._ “I'm sure something would have come along."

“As simple as that, huh?”

“As simple as that.” A knock sounds at the door, perfectly timed. “And that should be the drinks I promised. Shall we?”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

One drink turns to two, and, never one to waste an opportunity, Reyes spends his time feeding her intelligence under the guise of gossip. His sphere of direct influence is largely limited to Kadara—at least as far as he’s willing to admit to Ryder, anyway—but one of the perks of being a successful smuggler is having an entirely plausible excuse to know a little bit about everything and everyone. Kadara isn’t the only place the less morally upstanding of the original Nexus cohort have decided to make their home, and Reyes has made a point of getting to know them all.

As bids for her approval go, it’s a particularly unsubtle one—he might as well hold up a sign that says, ‘I am useful, ask me how’—but Ryder doesn’t seem to mind. Quite the opposite, in fact; she laps it up, laughing at all the right places and listening intently at others, as beautifully responsive a listener as any storyteller could wish. If he finds himself driven to embellish certain details a little past the bounds of plausibility, just to see the disbelieving curl of her mouth, well, Ryder doesn’t seem to mind that too much, either.

“-and _that_ is how I secured safe passage on and off Elaaden,” he says. “I’m told the krogan eventually forgave me for the hangover.”

“Uh-huh.” Ryder rolls her eyes, skepticism painted over the smile that keeps trying to peek through. “I’m sure it happened exactly like that, too.”

“Oh, every word.” He sits up and reaches for the half-full bottle, his hand hovering politely over the neck. “Another round, Pathfinder?”

She glances down at the glass in her hand, as if only belatedly noticing that it’s empty, then regretfully shakes her head. “Better not,” she says, and sets it aside on the coffee table. “ _Someone_ took his sweet time getting back here earlier-”

“A thousand pardons,” he says promptly.

“-so I’m one round up on you already. Three’s pretty much my limit.”

“Sensible,” he approves, though he’d dearly love to get the story of how _that_ rule came to be, someday. Sneaking out to lie her way into bars on the Citadel, perhaps? Contraband in the dorms at the Academy? Or one too many ill-advised adventures on shore leave? “I have a similar rule, myself. Business is no place for an unclear head.”

“Business?” Ryder presses a hand to her heart, pretending offense. “And here I thought we were getting to be friends.”

It’s impossible not to smile back at her for that sally, so he doesn’t even try. “Oh that as well, of course,” he assures her. “All of my best friends are business associates as well. What would we even talk about, else?”

“I’d argue, but most of _my_ friends are crewmates. I don’t really have a lot of room to talk.” She sighs, stretching her legs out in front of her. “Speaking of, they're going to be wondering where I am."

It's not that late, especially not by his standards; he can still only barely hear the club music through the walls, relatively quiet for the dinner rush. It won't get properly loud until later- but then, Ryder's responsibilities likely have her on a very different schedule than his own. "Early one tomorrow?"

"They're all early ones, in this galaxy."

She sounds suspiciously unconcerned about it. Almost… cheerful. “Don’t tell me," he says, squinting at her playfully, "that you’re a morning person.”

“Okay, I won’t." She's smiling. It's unfair how contagious that smile is. “But I _will_ say that the sunrises are pretty great on Kadara, if you give them a chance.”

“I despise people like you,” he warns, trying to keep his lips from twitching. “On a deep and fundamental level.”

She laughs back at him, eyes sparkling, and for a moment it’s easy to forget that she’s the Pathfinder, the linchpin to his successes here on Kadara, with so much riding on her shoulders. She’s just Ryder, who likes bad jokes and worse booze and is congenitally incapable of backing down from innuendo. It’s not a feeling he gets to enjoy often. He wonders how long it can possibly last.

“Well,” Ryder purrs, and this time she’s definitely looking at his mouth, so outrageously flirtatious it feels like a private joke, between the two of them, “I guess I’ll have to see what I can do to change your mind.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_To: Vidal, Reyes._  
 _From: Ryder, Pathfinder Sara._  
 _Timestamp: 10:37 am._

_sunrise1.jpg_

There’s no message included, just the attachment, and Reyes stares at it for longer than he’d like to admit, still fuzzy with sleep, before he finally realizes why the hell she'd send this to him.

_I’ve had the pleasure, thank you very much,_ he sends back, rolling over onto his belly so he can brace one elbow against the mattress to type. _I see plenty from the wrong side._

_Nine out of ten doctors agree, a good night’s sleep and a great breakfast is the most important factor in a successful day!_

He rolls his eyes. _I was working on it, until SOMEONE woke me up._

_Whoops. :( At least I’m cuter than an alarm clock, right?_

_I’d hope a Pathfinder could aim a little higher._

He waits a moment for a reply, and when there isn’t one, muzzily decides that the conversation is probably done. Either that, or someone, somewhere, started shooting.

Still, something about the image catches his eye when he goes to close his omni-tool, and he pulls it up, squinting at the angle of the shadows in the foreground. She took this facing east, obviously, looking out over the valley. The ground is sloping away down to the right under her feet, which means that the Nomad in the background is pointing north, into the foothills.

Towards Draullir.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_To: Crux._  
 _From: C_  
 _Timestamp: 10:49 am._

_Incoming._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be honest: you got most of the way through this chapter thinking I forgot about the Collective base storyline, didn't you. Joke's on you! I only _almost_ forgot about it because I was too busy rewriting my murder investigation eight thousand times.


	4. Four

"All things considered, it sounds like it could have gone better."

"It could have gone worse, too. This time, at least, nobody was shot.” Reyes takes the unlabeled bottle that Kian hands him and sniffs at it cautiously. "New batch?"

"Don't worry, I tested it on some of the regulars earlier. Don't want to accidentally poison the boss with dodgy product."

"Yes, when you do poison me, it won't be accidental." Still, he doesn't hesitate to pour a measure in his glass and raise it in toast. "To mutiny."

"Fucking cheers to that." They both drink, Kian finishing his in one swallow while Reyes takes a more measured sip. He wants to keep a clear head tonight. "Speaking of, I gotta tell you, I’ve been hearing all manner of questions about that sweet little Pathfinder of yours, these past few days.”

Reyes wonders with a distant sort of amusement which part would offend Ryder more: ‘sweet,’ or ‘yours?’ He takes another sip and then sets the glass down on the coffee table, turning to face Kian and draping his arm casually across the back of the couch. “Questions, hmm?”

“Just questions, for now.” Kian shifts uncomfortably under Reyes’s steady gaze. “Seems like most understood the hands-off rule, as far as it goes, but then it got out that she and her crew were on-base yesterday. You’ve got a lot of people wonderin’ if she’s not going to lead the Outcasts right to our door.”

_Why is it that the information that’s supposed to stay siloed always manages to ‘get out,’ but critical instructions are the ones that get delayed?_ Murphy’s Law, he supposes. It’s not as if the capricious bastard didn’t followed them from the Milky Way. Their arrival in Andromeda certainly proved that. 

“I don’t think there’s much risk of that, but Crux has contingencies in place if I’m wrong.” Reyes shrugs slightly, smiling easily under Kian’s squinty examination. “It was a calculated risk like any other. She’s got questions about the Collective; what better place to get answers than the source?”

Kian’s eyebrows creep up his forehead. “Thought that was what your little ‘friendship’ was all about. Answerin’ any questions she’s got so she doesn’t go to Sloane with them instead.”

Well. That’s _one_ of the reasons. “Ryder’s the type who likes to figure things out for herself,” he says instead, which has the benefit of being true. “She wouldn’t trust my word on the Collective any more than that recruiter she was chatting up in Kralla’s yesterday. She had to see it to believe it- so we let her see.”

“Just like that?” Kian holds his hands up when Reyes frowns at him. “Don’t give me that look, mate, I trust you fine. You say the girl’s good for it, I believe you. But you pay me to tell you what others won’t, and I’m telling you, people are worried. You can’t blame ‘em for it.”

Reyes wants to say that their _feelings_ on the matter is none of his concern; all he needs is their obedience. But he knows better than most that a small discontent can snowball into something bigger when you can least afford it, and he’s not foolish enough to leave something to fester just as a salve to his pride. “I don’t,” he says, and softens it with a smile, making himself feel it as the words come out of his mouth. “But they can rest easy. Ryder’s not going to turn us in.” He tries to put his certainty, borne out of hours of research and deduction and observation, into something that would make sense to someone who’s never met her. “If she does, she’d have to admit to the Outcasts that she’s had dealings with the Collective, and Sloane won’t forgive that.”

Kian’s face clears a little. “Yeah, fair enough. She seems like a smart cookie, your Pathfinder. Makes sense she’d play it close to the vest. Still.” He shrugs, fingers tapping restively against the side of his glass. “I were you, I’d figure out a way to nail that down, and soon. I’ll spread the word, but people are going to wonder until they got something else to wonder about. Way of the world.”

“Of course,” Reyes says, with a smile he doesn’t feel. “When it happens, you’ll be the first to know.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“I don’t know why you’re surprised, darling.” Keema’s image wavers on the shuttle’s viewscreen, then snaps back into focus again, frowning prettily at him. “Crux told you as much when you first sent the instructions along. Did you really think people weren’t going to talk?”

“Crux changed her tune once she met Ryder for herself, as you’d know if you’d bothered to read the report.” He props his boots up on the console, avoiding anything important with the ease of long practice, and stretches out, popping the joints in his lower back. Christ, he’s been sitting around too much recently. Too much paperwork, not enough action. “You know she found that traitor we’ve been hunting?”

Keema doesn’t have any trouble following his indistinct pronouns. “The one faking up orders from you and pocketing the proceeds?”

“That’s the one. Three weeks we’ve been on her trail, and Ryder found her in an afternoon.”

“You’re kidding. No, you never kid about business. What under the stars did she do?”

“Wandered around the base all afternoon, talked to everyone who stood still long enough, and came back to Crux with a name. Damned if she wasn’t right.” He taps his fingers on his knee, one-two-three, one-two-three. “It’s that AI of hers. I’m telling you, the things I could do with tech like that, it defies imagination. She picked up protein markers from alcohol using her _omni-tool._ Identified Dorado using biometrics, just from a passive scan.”

“Is that so,” Keema says, in the slow thoughtful tone he associates with _danger_. “You’d best be careful with that, you know. That treacherous little adhi isn’t the only one who's lied to the Pathfinder recently, as you might recall.”

He presses one hand to his chest, overcome. “Ah, Keema. Don’t tell me you’re worried about me.”

“Never _that,_ ” she disdains, but she does smile back at him. “But you _have_ put a lot on one woman, dear. Especially one woman who has a number of reasons to be very cross with you if she uses that precious AI to see through your little schemes.”

He’s only thought about it a time or thousand since Ryder crossed his path- not that he’ll ever admit as much to Keema. “So little faith,” he says instead, arch with mock offense. “I haven’t slipped up yet, have I?”

One brow climbs her forehead. “You’re very good, Reyes Vidal. I wouldn’t waste my time on you otherwise. But you’re not bloody infallible.”

There’s real annoyance in her voice, though she’s trying to cushion it behind a smile. _Tread carefully,_ he cautions himself. He needs Keema, maybe even more than he needs Ryder at the moment. He could rebuild the intel network she provides him, if it came to that, but his claim to the throne isn’t half so steady without her, and they both know it.

"We need Ryder," he says- giving her the truth that she wants, if not exactly the one she asked for. "We need the Nexus to see Kadara Port as a potential ally, not another obstacle to be removed. Sloane can't offer that. Ryder wouldn't be here, involving herself in local bullshit, if the Initiative wasn't interested in putting an outpost here. That means more people, more trade, more opportunities for everyone… _if_ we can convince Ryder that the Collective is a safe bet. Otherwise, one way or another, the Nexus _will_ be here in force, and they _will_ stamp us all out. It's just a matter of time."

Keema's expression says that she doesn't know if that would be such a bad thing. She talks a good game, does Keema, but she's ambitious. Under Sloane, she's little more than a mouthpiece, a puppet parroting things Sloane wants to hear. With him, she could have real power, authority, _recognition,_ all of the things he doesn't have any interest in taking for himself. But if she could get rid of _both_ of them… 

"You'd go down with that ship too, dear heart," he tells her, voice soft with warning. "Even if the Initiative would ever find a way to trust someone from Sloane's court—and that’s a big ‘if’—do you think Evfra would be so forgiving?” She blinks, the only expression of surprise she’ll allow herself. He smiles languidly back at her. “I'm not his only agent here, you know. He knows what you did during the coup. Without me as a buffer, he's never leave the angara in your hands for long."

Keema stares at him for a long moment, lips compressed, her huge angaran eyes hard with challenge. Then she breaks, looking away with an artful laugh, and he knows he's made his point. 

“Of course, darling.” If he didn’t know better, he’d almost think she sounded sincere. “And this Pathfinder of yours does sound delightful, I have to agree. She seems quite concerned with the angara under your care, which is good to hear.”

“Ah, so you _did_ read the report.” He considers pressing the issue, then decides to let it go. She needs him too, at least for now. And if that changes—well, he’s got contingency plans in place, if it comes to that. “It can't be that much of a surprise, given her politics. You know she has a Resistance fighter on her crew?”

“Everyone knows that. It’s hard to miss him sulking about the place, nose in the air like a lady in a pigsty.” Keema toys with the elaborate embroidery on her cuff. “And so you, of course, found a way to make sure she sees my people getting all the fair treatment from the Collective that they haven’t received from Sloane. Very thoughtful of you. I presume that’s why you promoted those new recruits up to the base last week?”

Reyes grins lazily back at her. “It’s good to shuffle agents around, Keema, you know that. Octans has a good touch with the younger ones. I simply wanted to make sure they got some training before we send them out into the field.”

“Oh, naturally.” She snorts and folds her long-fingered hands into her lap in front of her. “Very well, Reyes, I’ll back your play. What do you need from me?”

“The Roekaar killings,” he says promptly. “I know you have contact with the scavs out in the Badlands. If they hear anything, I need to know.”

“Really?” Keema arches one elegant brow, reeking of skepticism. “Are you sure that’s the best use of your time at present?”

“Unless we want to keep bleeding support while half the Port blames me for the killings, yes.” Ryder hadn’t made the mistake of downplaying the problem, even without the additional motivation of its effect on the Collective. This is more than just a few deaths, even very public ones. It’s a declaration of war, and there can be only one answer. Ryder’s soldier enough to understand that, even if Keema isn’t. “Besides, think of the feather in the Pathfinder’s cap if she can clear them out.”

“With your help, of course.”

He folds his hands behind his head and smiles up at her image on his viewscreen. “But of course,” he tells her, sincerity overflowing on the corner of his grin. “You know how much I love to be helpful.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

He doesn’t have to wait long; the Roekaar are getting impatient, and Keema’s contacts are _very_ good. Less than twenty-four hours later he has a navpoint, and three hours after that he has confirmation from his scouts that the scene is secure: the Outcasts haven’t found it yet, and neither has anybody else.

_Finally, something goes my way,_ he thinks, and calls Ryder.

"That was fast." Comm signals out in the Badlands are usually shit, but Ryder's end of the vidcall is crisp and clear, enough that he can see the sweat gleaming at her hairline, the smudge of dirt on her cheekbone, smeared there with a careless swipe of her wrist. "Got your navpoint. They left the body out _here_?"

She never makes him waste time explaining the obvious, that’s for sure. “It breaks pattern, I know. Of course, it might be some other predator entirely.”

“Not the four-footed kind,” she says, and he can see her gaze flickering just slightly off to the side, skimming the file he put together together for her. “Ripped his plates open before a gunshot to the head? That’s nasty. And a krogan, whoof. Not an easy target.”

“It would take a group.”

“A group of professionals. Not that Kadara’s short on assholes who like to fuck up somebody’s day, but why would anybody fuck with a lone krogan for shits and giggles? It’s probably the same guys.”

“But something interrupted them,” he says, mostly to keep her talking. She has the faintly distant look of an engineer working through a set of variables, and he’d hate to see the wheels stop turning so soon.

“Before they could transport the body, yeah, yeah that makes sense.” Ryder pulls at her lower lip with one gloved hand. “Witnesses, maybe? File says- Should I ask how you got this, by the way?"

He smiles guilelessly. "Can I help it if something about me moves people to generosity?"

"Yeah, because that's a thing that happens on Kadara. _Generosity._ " Her heart isn't in the banter, though; the crime scene has her attention. "Okay, so, file says he was living alone. Was there another homestead nearby?”

“Not close enough to interfere. The victim wasn’t a sociable sort of fellow, from what I’ve been able to pick up.”

"Which would make him a good target for these guys. Although, if we’re right and it was the Roekaar, they might have tried, and realized they weren’t strong enough to move the body. They’re not from around here, wouldn’t necessarily realize what they’re getting into if they hadn’t tangled with a krogan before. They're big bastards, even heavier than they look."

Reyes grins at her invitingly. "I'm almost afraid to ask how you know that."

"Tempted as I am to make up an awesome story about one-to-one combat? The truth is that Drack keeps falling asleep in the Nomad." Her grin is huge and silly. "Have you ever had a krogan in full battle armor napping on your shoulder when you're trying to drive?"

He tilts his head, trying and failure to picture that. "I can't say I've had the pleasure, no."

"Well, it fucking sucks."

He snorts. "I'll take your word for it. _And_ your theory about moving the body- if this is the Roekaar as we suspect, they wouldn't necessarily have known to come prepared to move someone of his size."

She shrugs—no attachment to her theory for the sake of ego. "Either way, I'll see for myself as soon as I get to the scene. I just need to finish up here and I'll head towards the navpoint you gave me."

"I want to say 'take your time,' but the Outcasts will hear about it sooner rather than later, if the scavs don't get to it first." Not that there's truly much risk of that, not with the Collective scout he has keeping an eye on the scene, but a little extra incentive never hurt anyone. "Early bird gets the worm, and all that."

"I hear you. Another hour here, maybe less. It takes a bit for SAM to work through Remnant decryption."

He tries not to perk up too obviously, which is difficult when he feels like a hunting dog going on point. "You're working on one of the monoliths?"

"Shoulda known you wouldn't let that slip by," she sighs, but there's a gleam in her eyes, quickly hidden. _She's testing me,_ he realizes, with a surge of appreciation. Dangling tidbits in front of his nose, checking to see if he's smart enough to take the bait. He can hardly take offense, when he's been doing the same since the moment they met. "Yeah, I’m trying to reboot the damn thing. Do me a favor and don’t tell Sloane. She might decide I’m infringing on her god-given right to make this planet as much of a shithole as possible.”

“My dear Pathfinder, I make it a personal policy to tell our lord and master as little as possible,” he assures her, smiling toothily. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

She grins at him, easy and fond. “I appreciate that,” she says, and then glances away at something beyond the camera and sighs. “Look, I gotta finish this, but I’ve got your navpoint, right? I can call you as soon as I’m there.”

“It’s a date,” he agrees, and she winks at him and cuts the call.

He lets his own smile fade as he looks at the empty screen where her face was just a moment before. Seeing Ryder again, it’s hard not to let the worries of his compatriots play through his head. Kian’s concerns are easy enough to dismiss—he can’t imagine Ryder going to Sloane for _anything,_ much less with information that could help her consolidate her hold on the Port—but Keema’s have a lingering bite he can’t quite dismiss. It’s not as if he doesn’t know the risk he took by inviting her into his inner sanctum. It’s just that the rewards far outweighed the risk.

He knew from their first meeting, looking into Ryder’s watchful eyes and seeing his own calculation looking back at him, that she’d need careful handling. She’s too suspicious to trust in propaganda or rumor without investigating for herself—and she’s too smart to believe in bullshit just because someone's trying to spin it into gold. It’s the reason he overrode Crux when she wanted to move the prisoners, and again when she’d asked to at least postpone the interrogations until after the Pathfinder was gone. He knows Ryder well enough, by now, to know that she’d never believe in the picture he painted for her unless it had some grime around the edges.

Some of the locals, feeling Sloane’s bootheels especially keenly, have a tendency to believe that they’re freedom-fighters out here in the Badlands, crusading against oppression and injustice from the shadows. That’s not what he wants from Ryder. He doesn’t want momentary tolerance bred out of smoke and mirrors; he wants to build something that will last. And that means letting her see them for exactly what they are: a well-funded, well-organized group of criminals, with enough skill and determination to take this lawless hellhole and turn it into the kind of trading partner that the Nexus desperately needs.

But what Ryder will tolerate from an ally of convenience may be very different than what she’ll accept from a friend—and it would take a better liar even than he to claim he doesn’t know they’re past business associates by now. Every time he involves her in his affairs, there’s a risk she’ll find him out. If she does, will she be understanding? Will she know why he did it, and forgive?

Or will she remember the moments she stood paralyzed in the doorway, watching the guards beat someone half to death for the crime of moving against him…

...and wonder if she would have been next?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“This place is a shithole,” she says, a few hours later.

He scrubs one hand across his eyes—he’d been half asleep when she called, dozing off in the cockpit after an extremely half-hearted effort at catching up on some of his reports. "'Hello, Reyes,'" he mimics kindly, his voice still a little hoarse. It’s still early, late afternoon at best, but he’s had a busy few days. "'It's good to hear from you, Reyes. How is everything?' Oh, business is going well, you know how it is…"

There’s no vid feed from her end, but he can easily picture the ironic look she’d give him, in the brief pause before she answers. "We were talking just this morning. Even you can't have gotten into too much trouble since then."

"'Even me?'" he quotes. "I'm quite sure I don't know what you're talking about. You haven't seen me in so much as a speck of trouble since we met."

"And yet, I feel pretty confident in my statement." He can hear the lazy smirk in her voice. "You gonna tell me I'm wrong?"

"Your theory might have some merit," he says, helpless to bite back his smile and so not even bothering to try. "And that's all I'll say on the matter. You said you've arrived at the crime scene?"

"Yeah, and like I said, it's a shithole." A generator hums in the background; she's outside, on the front steps, most likely. "I can see why he lived alone. A roommate would have murdered him a long time ago."

"Let's call that one 'Theory B,'" Reyes murmurs. "Now. What do you see?"

He has some preliminary images, taken by the scout who'd discovered the scene, but he hasn't done more than glance over them. His talents don't lie on this side of a criminal investigation; left to his own devices, he would have just bought their location, killed them all, and been done with it. That isn't the purpose of this exercise—or at least, not the only purpose. He's quite sure that when she's done here, she'll be just as capable of clearing out the vermin as she is in tracking the crumbs they leave behind.

"Place is a mess," she says, and he can hear the hiss of the door opening, the measured thump of her boot heels on the metal grating as she paces back and forth just outside. "And not just bad housekeeping, either. Shit's knocked down, blood everywhere, the works."

“Our friend Zear must have put up a hell of a fight.”

"Was that his name?" Ryder says, sounding vaguely interested. She moves on before he can answer, both from the question and her outside vigil: he can hear her mincing footsteps, picking their way across the floor. "The thing is, though, pretty much all of the blood here is krogan. So either the crew that took him down was _also_ krogan, or-"

"-or he didn't take anyone with him when he went down."

"Which, let's face it, isn't exactly common for a krogan." From behind her, somewhere on the other side of the open door, Reyes can faintly hear a deep voice call _Damn right!_ "It'd take a team."

"A skilled, professional team?"

She snorts. "Yeah, yeah, fits the theory, blah blah. Hold your horses. Evidence first, _then_ analysis."

His startled silence, presumably, speaks volumes, because she laughs.

"I _am_ the daughter of two fairly well-known researchers," she points out. "The scientific method is the only god I was ever taught to worship."

"How fortunate," he murmurs, thinking of his own childhood, the war between faith and cynicism his mother never quite seemed to escape. "All right, then, give me your evidence. Walk me through it."

"Actually, I can do you one better," and he knows her _just_ well enough to feel vaguely wary of the sudden glee in her voice. "Can you- yeah."

His screen flickers and then resolves itself into an image of the disordered prefab, furniture tossed askew, blood pooled and smeared darkly across the floor. He thinks at first that he's looking through a vidcomm channel, except the field of view is too high; when her gauntleted hand rises into view, scanner active and humming on her wrist, he realizes that he's seeing through her eyes. A live feed from her HUD; a visor, perhaps, or her helmet. No, he could hear the faint echo of her voice off the walls when she spoke, not the vaguely muffled tones of a helmet speaker. A visor, then. She probably acquired one from the turian militia members, like her crewmate Nyx.

It's surprisingly hard to picture her wearing one.

"All good?" she says, and he nods even though she can't see him, stretching his toes in his boots and making himself comfortable in his chair.

"Your feed's flickering a little," he says mildly, because what he wants to say is _do you know how much I've paid to have even half the bandwidth a stream like this would require in the middle of the mountains,_ and she already sounds unbearably pleased with herself. She doesn't need him to stroke her ego further. "Having problems with your signal?"

"Must be," Ryder says, even as the flicker comes again, a brief blur of black and then gone, so quick he might not have noticed it if he didn't have the video blown up so large on the cockpit display. "Take a look. Want to know if you're seeing what I'm seeing."

She doesn't tell him what she's seeing, of course; that would be too easy. In fact, she's unusually silent as she paces out the room, careful to keep from stepping in or on any of the evidence. Her scanner blinks commanding over the body, over the pools of blood, and data appears in the corner of the HUD as it finishes processing, so much faster than any field scanner ever could. Ryder says nothing to any of it—or maybe, Reyes thinks, catching the faint sound of an indrawn breath, the shift in her wrist almost like she wants to reach for something, she's just choosing to keep her thoughts to herself.

It isn't until she finishes her slow circuit of the room that she finally speaks. "So?"

"You first," he says, with a smile in his voice to take the sting out of his refusal. He hasn't, after all, gone to all the effort to get her here only to have her defer to his nonexistent expertise.

She gives a small, thoughtful hum, almost subvocal. "And here I thought you weren't the type to turn down an opportunity to show off."

"Has anyone ever told you that words hurt?" he says, but he lets his lips curl into a smile, tipping his head in rueful acknowledgement. "Come now, we've been doing so well at taking turns, haven't we? I'm hardly an expert in criminal investigation."

"Mm, I suppose you're mostly used to the other side of things," she says mildly, and moves on before he can think of a clever enough response. "Alright, this is what I've got. Stop me if anything sounds off to you."

If he'd thought before that her concise summary of the previous crime scene was a product of time and preparation, the rundown she gives now does away with that assumption. He leans back in his seat and closes his eyes, letting her low, steady voice wash over him.

When she's done, he opens his eyes and looks back up. She's flipped the feed back over to the vidcomm on her omni-tool, and she looms large on the screen above him, a lock of hair falling into her eyes and her free hand fiddling with something just out of view of the camera. The sun is behind her, making it hard to pick out her expression, but he thinks she's looking back at him with a kind of expectant amusement.

"If I was interrupting naptime, you should have said something. I could have called back later."

Definitely amusement. "And ruin a Pathfinder's precious schedule? Perish the thought. Besides, I was listening. The angara tracks and DNA your SAM found seem particularly pertinent."

"Mm, only two sets of distinct footprints, though. It would have taken more than two to take him down without injury." She seems like she's arguing more for the sake of it rather than out of any particular sense of belief. "The Roekaar aren't the only angara who are pissed at Nexus exiles. It could've been locals with an axe to grind. Or a group of Badlanders going after an isolated target."

Obligingly, he gives her the counterargument she’s clearly looking for. "Badlanders would have cleaned out anything of value."

"And instead they only took the food and water," Ryder says, nodding. "Which is exactly what I'd do if I was a soldier used to living off the land, with no intention of trading with the locals."

He lets out a breath, more relieved than he'll ever admit. "So you believe me now?"

"I believed you before," she says, lips curled up at the corners. "But I needed something more than your well-honed instincts for skullduggery to take to Evfra, when he sends me angry messages about making his job harder."

He raises his eyebrows. Everything they found in there confirmed his theory about the Roekaar—but he wouldn’t call it _evidence,_ per se. Enough for Kadara rules, perhaps, but he knows the lord and master of the Resistance has higher standards. "And you got what you needed?"

"I did."

He almost thinks she’s going to decline to elaborate, just leave him hanging and sign off with a laughing goodbye, but then she picks up the thing she’s playing with, opening her palm to reveal a slim, wicked-looking dagger. The spiral-shaped handle is made of good angaran steel wrapped around a core of some kind of dark metal, and underneath the smears of dried blood the long, razor-edged blade is acid-etched with a painfully familiar angular script. He still doesn’t know more than a handful of words of written Shelesh, but there’s two he’s seen on the walls of the slums often enough that he can guess the general meaning.

_Drau_ and _vesagara._

Death to outsiders.

“Well,” he says brightly. “Gracious of the Roekaar, to leave us with the proverbial smoking gun.”

“They’re getting cocky,” Ryder says. She rubs the pad of her thumb across the flat of the blade, flaking away some of the blood. “Or frustrated. If the killings are their attempt to make a statement, it’s gotta be driving them crazy that everyone’s saying the Charlatan did it, right? Their glorious message, getting lost in the muck.”

He hadn’t thought of it in precisely those terms, but she’s right. However frustrating he finds it to be blamed for crimes he _hasn’t_ done, for a change, it must be just as irritating for the real killers to have their deeds attributed to someone else. To reduce their actions to petty squabbling between two Exile factions, nothing to do with the angara at all. He’d almost call it poetic justice, if it wasn’t proving so terribly inconvenient for him.

Well, if it’s credit they want, he’s more than happy to see that they get it. After, of course, escorting them off his planet—preferably in a body bag. “They should have set their sights elsewhere, then. Kadara isn’t kind to moralizers.”

“Kadara isn’t kind to anyone.”

Her mouth is still curled up at the corners, all easy amusement, but there’s a barbed edge in her voice. Aimed at him? Or something else?

“It’s can be kind enough, with the right friends,” he says cautiously. “Or have I bored you so quickly?”

Her gaze snaps to his. “Never _that,_ ” she says, the careless curl of her smile going wider, more sincere. “Don’t worry, Reyes. I’m not going anywhere. Except maybe hunting for Roekaar, if you can find them for me.”

_Reyes._ It shouldn’t be so startling to hear; everyone calls him by his first name, practically. He’s never stood much on formality, not when discarding it is so useful to set twitchy clients at ease. Even hardened criminals who should know better are susceptible to the illusion of it, the trappings of friendship it implies. The reality is quite different, naturally, but it’s a useful trick nonetheless.

It’s the first time she’s ever used it, however, and he’s surprised by the flush of warmth that crawls up the back of his neck at the sound of it in her mouth—the way her lips curls around the ‘r,' the sibilant rasp of the ‘s’ on the back of her tongue. He clears his throat as subtly as possible and raises one eyebrow in challenge, hoping she hasn’t noticed anything amiss. “‘If I find them,’ hmm? You certainly have a lot of faith in my information gathering skills.”

“Consider it a challenge, if that makes you feel better.” Her blue eyes laugh at him. “You seem like you’d be motivated by that sort of thing.”

“I don’t think you know me well enough to make such sweeping generalizations.”

“Workin’ on it,” is her easy, if slightly ominous, reply. “Are you saying you can’t do it?”

“I’m saying I don’t work for free.” Not that he isn’t getting the better half of this little exchange, but she doesn’t know that and Reyes doesn’t see any reason to give her the upper hand. “You’re the one with the hero complex, Ryder. Not me.”

Her pretty pink lips curl up into a smirk that’d look cutting if her eyes weren’t so warm. “Think of your poor, dead customers,” she tells him, overly solemn. “All perforated and helpless and… oh yeah, _unable to pay their bills_.”

“You do make a compelling argument.”

“Plus, I'll owe you a favor.”

“A favor, you say.” He taps one finger against his lips, pretending to think. Inwardly, he smiles a crocodile grin. _Oh no, not the briar patch!_ “I think I could be persuaded.”

“Great! Then I’ll hear from you soon.”

She cuts the feed before he can respond, and he leans back in his chair, laughing quietly to himself. Marches to the beat of her own drum, does Ryder. Every time he thinks he gets a handle on how she thinks, she goes and surprises him all over again.

Well. She wouldn’t be half as interesting otherwise, would she?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It doesn’t take him long to get the requested information—all he has to do is check Kinder’s latest scouting report, since he found the base not three days back. Still, he lets himself sit on it for the better part of the day. No need to set expectations too high, is there?

She responds to his message within seconds, fast enough that she had to have been waiting for it. _Impressive._

_Well, I have to be, in order to keep up with a Pathfinder._

_I was talking about the early morning,_ she shoots back. _Sun’s only been up for an hour. I’m shocked you’re up already._

He rolls his eyes. _Try ‘still.’ I’m for bed after this._

_Aww. :( But the sun’s so happy to see you!_

She follows up with another photo, faster than he can think of a snappy reply. The sun is halfway up over the mountain range, tiny fingers of light spreading down into the misty shroud of the valley, and he’d spare a moment to be impressed if the angle wasn’t quite so vertiginously high. Is she up a bloody cliff?

_That’s... quite the view._

_I know, right? I keep trying to talk the others into joining me, but PB likes her Remnant research a little closer to solid ground._

Right. The monoliths. _How did you even get up there?_

She sends him another photo- this one obviously taken by some sort of drone, as it’s a wide angle of her halfway up the monolith, grinning up at the camera and flashing the peace sign with with gauntleted fingers. Her other hand is stretched out above her head, her palm stuck fast to the slick surface of the wall, and the toes of her boots are wedged into the narrowest of gaps between two of the great black plates. _Jump jets, maglocks, and determination,_ she sends a moment later, while he’s still staring at her precarious perch with a distant sense of horror. _You should try it sometime._

Right. Because he doesn’t have enough things in his life attempting to kill him, he needs to add gravity to the list. No thank you. _Please tell me you’re not still up there._ If she’s typing responses on her omni-tool while clinging for dear life, he’s going to strangle her himself.

_Back on solid ground, alas. Why, you worried about me?_

 _Worried about the favor you owe me,_ he retorts. _I can’t collect if you fall and break your neck._

_Aww. :(_

He smiles almost in spite of himself. _I can meet you at the Roekaar base by sunset tonight,_ he sends, reminding himself that he did actually message her for a reason and trying to get the conversation back on track. _That work for you?_

_Sure thing, skippy. It’s a date._

He snorts and goes to close the message window, only to pause on the second image she sent. She’s flushed red from exertion, and her sweat-dampened hair is stuck to her forehead and her tattooed cheek, but her grin is incredibly contagious, devilry dancing in her blue eyes and her soft lips parted as she pants for breath.

Feeling obscurely like he’s getting away with something, he saves the photo to his omni-tool and sits down to take off his boots. Three hours. All he needs is three hours of sleep and then he’ll be ready to move. There’s some supplies he wants to pick up at the southern checkpoint before he goes to meet Ryder at the Roekaar base.

He’s fairly sure she’ll like the surprise.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not saying that the title comes from Miike Snow's ["My Trigger"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl6k_h2drK8) but I'm not _not_ saying that, either. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> If you want to check out my Ryder (or the eight thousand other screenshots I've taken) I have albums up on [imgur](http://sorchandhb.imgur.com/). [01: Planetfall](http://imgur.com/a/tu2nJ); [02: Nexus Reunion](http://imgur.com/a/dJ4kz); [03: A Better Beginning](http://imgur.com/a/VwaNY). More added as I get them cleaned up and uploaded.
> 
> I have [a tumblr](http://sorrelchestnut.tumblr.com/), you should come say hi!


End file.
